Make Liberty Win has expensive, messy showing in Wyoming primary

With Wyoming's August 20 state primary coming up, competing Republican factions are vying for control of the state legislature, and campaign mailers are bombarding voters around the state.

One of the campaign mailers boasts about GOP state senate candidate Keith Kennedy as a "gun rights CHAMPION," but the picture is not the Wyoming politician. Instead, the flyer uses a photo of a Virginia-based Keith Kennedy, who worked for the U.S. Senate for nearly thirty years and has no ties to Wyoming politics.

Kennedy from Virginia only learned of the mix-up when he received a phone call from local outlet Wyofile , but his takeaway was simple.

"People should be discerning about what they read," Kennedy said.

The mailer was distributed in southern Wyoming's Albany County and was paid for by the Virginia-based organization Young Americans for Liberty's affiliate, Make Liberty Win.

Make Liberty Win's executive director, Barrett Young, downplayed the photo error and other inaccuracies reported by local outlets , including campaign material sent hundreds of miles from the correct district, the wrong dates for early voters, and labeling newcomer candidates as sitting politicians as "a simple mistake."

"It was an unfortunate production error that we got the wrong Keith Kennedy, Young said. "But at the end of the day, one thing you got to keep in mind here is we're sending out hundreds of pieces of communication, not just in Wyoming, but across the country."

Make Liberty Win spent about $370,000 on Wyoming's Republican primary, making it this primary season's biggest spender.

Politicians across the Cowboy State have labeled the mailers as dishonest and misleading, although some are skeptical about the mailers' effects on Wyoming's tighter-knit, rural communities.

"I talk to my constituents. I'm from a little town. Folks here, they grew up with me, they know me, they have my phone number." Republican Wyoming State Rep. Tony Niemiec said. "They're calling me, they're texting me. I explain it, and they're like, "These guys are freaking idiots."

According to OpenSecrets , the Virginia-based political action committee has received zero Wyoming-based donations since its creation, with the bulk of its funding coming from Texas-based libertarian activist organization Young Americans For Liberty (YAL), including $7.9 million between June 2023 and April 2024 .

YAL is a national nonprofit and, under IRS tax codes, is not required to disclose its donors—a category more frequently associated with " dark money groups " that raise and spend money to influence public policy debates. Unlike political campaigns and other entities that engage in advocacy relating to elections, the groups are generally not required to disclose their donors or comply in different ways with federal campaign finance laws.

When asked how the PAC ensures it addresses issues specific to Wyoming voters, Young pointed to the "bear arms" flyer template used in the Kennedy race and in other states, saying that the organization sees significant overlap in the voters it targets.

"There's not a huge variance in the Republican primary electorate across red states," Young said.

YAL emphasizes state-level races and claims to have over 320 "liberty legislators across the country" as part of the group's Hazlitt Coalition. While the official list of Hazlitt Coalition members has been removed from the YAL website recently, USA TODAY secured a screenshot dated July 28, which lists 16 lawmakers in the Cowboy State as coalition members.

Make Liberty Win hasn't just caught the attention of the Wyoming press.

The group's efforts in the Ohio primaries made headlines , where it spent over $1.7 million and earned two complaints to the Ohio Election Commission. In Idaho's primary, the group spent over $700,000 and faced further accusations of misinformation . YAL played a notable role in a public rift in the Gem State's Republican Leadership, with condemnation of the mailers resulting in the withdrawal of 16 Idaho legislators from YAL's Hazlitt coalition.

When asked if he was concerned about Make Liberty Win being associated with misinformation and out-of-state money in Wyoming races and elsewhere, Young framed his organization as a political disruptor.

"What I would tell anybody in Wyoming is, if you look at the establishment, they use out-of-state money too," Young said. "The reason we're getting so much negative pushback in all these states is the good old boys club."

Cy Neff reports on Wyoming politics for USA TODAY. You can reach him at cneff@usatoday.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @CyNeffNews

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Make Liberty Win has expensive, messy showing in Wyoming primary